


Invisible

by miss_lanyon



Category: Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Revisionist Fairy Tale, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 00:48:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_lanyon/pseuds/miss_lanyon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Out of two hundred fifty-eight servants made invisible, only we have stayed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Invisible

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a_la_grecque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_la_grecque/gifts).



> Thanks for the awesome prompt!

I walk, invisible, through the castle. I cannot even see myself except in strong sunlight: the kind that cats lie in, that falls in thick shafts of honey through enchanted glass windows, glittering with motes of dust. There are no cats here any more. There is always dust, of course. I do not think any enchantment exists that can control it entirely: that's what maids are for.

It is Sunday night, and although we no longer pray we meet together in the Great Hall. Pip lights candles so we can see the room, if not each other. We are all here, except Hannah, who no longer leaves the kitchens: Pip, Jehan, David; Marie, Leah, Kathleen, Blanche. Out of two hundred fifty-eight servants made invisible, only we have stayed. The rest drifted away, and no one still in the castle knows what happened to them. I sit in my accustomed chair, emerald-green silk spread over my lap, picking out stitches I myself had made twenty-two years ago. The handless scissors flash in the candlelight.

Marie, who is braiding garlic, asks, "Have you seen the new Princess, Emma?" She arrived four days ago; I have only seen her once, to get her measurements. I will see more than enough of her in the days to come.

"Yes."

"She is very beautiful," Jehan says with his soft French accent. He always says that. They are all beautiful.

The silence lingers. "I'm taking in Lucretia's gowns," I say inanely. Lucretia had been closest to her in size, and a great favorite with all of us. Eventually all the gowns will be made over to fit the new Princess: she will have an endless, extravagant parade of silks and taffetas, satins and velvets, that no one but the Master will ever see. I have not had to make a new gown in decades.

"Her father is a King," Leah murmurs, still a little awed by royalty. I think it is because she was only fourteen when the Change took hold, and she hasn't grown. She is sitting close enough to me that I can smell the orange-blossom scent that identifies her in the daytime hours, when we cannot speak.

Kathleen sighs, wistful and amused. "They're all King's daughters, or at least verra rich, and they're all verra beautiful."

"And they're all spoiled and witless and terrible snobs. We should just kill them," Blanche snaps, her knitting needles clacking a little too hard. She is sitting on top of the polished mahogany table, a shadow draped with a half-made shawl as fine as any the castle will provide. I remember her face, pixie-sharp, with bones as delicate as the bones of bird's wings; she is the only one left that I knew before the Change.

"Now, Blan -- " began Jehan.

"Now what, Jehan? _You_ get to look at them. I don't care about looking at naked sixteen-year-old girls. None of them is ever going to break the spell, because they're too stupid and the Master's gone too far into -- into wherever he's going!"

"She's fifteen, and she can read," I say to sidetrack the coming argument. I have sidetracked a lot of them, in the years since the Duke's son's coachman ran over the magician's little boy, and the magician cursed us all. "Jehan, I wish you wouldn't watch them."

"There's nothing else to do. It's not like I ever touch one." True: he doesn't ever actually touch anyone anymore, as I well know. I give him the worn-out slippers, the coffee-stained gloves -- though not the petticoats or corsets; I think he gets them from Kathleen.

"What's her name?" Leah asks. She works in the gardens, and only comes into the castle to bathe and for Sunday meetings, unless she is needed: she even sleeps above the stable, though she could have any room she wished in the palace.

"Vivian," Blanche says sourly. " _Vanity,_ it ought to be. 'Can you braid my hair up into a crown?'" she mimics. "'I would like some rouge. Give me the rubies.' And starts crying if I so much as pull a tangle." She folds the knitting needles together with the shawl and yarn, presumably before she breaks them. Her temper has shortened through the years, as the depressions grew longer and the dizzying days of euphoria fewer and further between.

"Do you want to work in the stillroom for a while, then?" Marie asks. The stillroom maid sees the least of the Princesses: she spends her time with teas and infusions and tinctures, and tending the minor injuries the Master deals himself almost daily, hunting or through simple clumsiness, even after ninety years.

"Yes, thank you."

"I'll take your turn at supper," I volunteer, reluctantly.

"Bless you, Emma." Then the shawl curtseys, and it and the garlic plaits exit together.

"Will he fall in love with her?" Davey asks finally. "If she's as bad as Blanche says?"

Davey falls in love with all of them, too. He is also in love with Blanche and Leah and Kathleen, and sometimes me though it doesn't do him any good. "Of course he will. He always does." With my little silver scissors I cut apart the seam straight down the bodice of the gown, through the heart.

#

It is not difficult to keep the castle with only eight servants, though no one knows anymore how many rooms there are. For one thing, clean rooms stay that way, caught in the queer neverness of the spell, until used again. When the Princess -- we call them all Princess, whether they are or not -- discovers a room, it is added to Blanche's or Kathleen's rounds. Even we, who have been here almost a hundred years, can no longer find our own way through the place unaided.

We trade duties, mostly, though Hannah always cooks and Jehan always valets, and I will never again work the stillroom. I usually keep the laundry, and the Master's and the Princesses' wardrobes, though I have become careless with our clothes that are only seen when we don't wear them.

Still, the castle does so much for us that time hangs heavy. We have all learned to speak Latin, French, and Gaelic; to read Latin, French and English; to play piano; to garden; to seduce. I taught them how to sew, and keep the stillroom, and the uncomfortable goodwives' stories of the West. I still hunt for herbs in the overrun garden and home woods. Jehan has his shoe collection, Hannah has her kitchen, and Davey has anyone he can in as many ways as their mutual imaginations can calculate. Pip is everyone's pet, even the Master's, but too young to really feel the years.

Many of our fellow invisibles left from sheer boredom.

I finish the green silk gown and bring it to the Princess' room. The door is labeled with her name, perhaps so we won't forget it. Kathleen is there, straightening the bottles of scent; I know her by the thickness of the air and the breath of bergamot and lemongrass. I wave the gown at her, and she turns a cut-crystal bottle to catch the sun. I miss the daytime gossip.

The Princess is taking a nap. She is indeed beautiful, with hair as dark and shining as a raven's breast, a mouth like a folded rose petal, mother-of-pearl skin. Asleep, she looks as sweet as marzipan. I arrange the gown carefully in the armoire and then take my seat on the window-bench, watching the sunset. If you listen carefully, and the room is silent, you can sometimes hear the far-off cries of birds. Marie bustles in, smelling of violets and carrying a basket of fresh wildflowers, which she weaves with a strand of diamonds for the Princess' hair.

The clock strikes seven and the Princess wakes. Her eyes are the blue of the magical roses on the palace steps, a pure deep twilight color. "I won't go to supper," she announces, and no amount of hugs or wordless cajoling will change her mind.

We have done this before. I open up the wardrobe; Kathleen, who'd been a milkmaid, pushes her to it. She fights like a kitten, all mewlings and softness, more petulance than fear. Marie gives her a moment to settle down and choose, and then finally grabs the emerald silk in exasperation. Kathleen and I hold her as Marie pulls off the nightgown and stuffs her into proper evening dress. By the time the laces are tightened she has quieted, and Marie curls her hair around the crown of diamonds and daisies while tears well up in her limpid eyes. "I hate you," she tells us, coherent again. "Why don't you let me alone?"

 _Because we are not allowed to, little princess,_ I think. _Because I hate you more, and have hated you longer than you have lived._

We alternate serving supper, the most unpleasant task of the days when a Princess is here; only Pip and Hannah escape it. He precedes us down the hall, lighting candles, and she follows slowly, sullenly, wafting through the corridors with perfect grace. Her pout is adorable. She is, quite possibly, the most beautiful girl I have seen in decades.

Davey has laid out the table and left already; Pip lights the candelabra and scampers out the servant's door. He will be back in time to light her way to her room: candles don't burn long here.

The Master sits, predator-still, at the head of the table. He wears the gold tonight, that makes his fur look so dark and his eyes so yellow. Blond lace spills from the throat and cuffs. When she sees him she suppresses a shudder, and looks fixedly at the white openwork tablecloth, worth more than her dowry. The smell of the food is revolting; I don't know how Hannah can prepare it, but it is one of the things the castle cannot, or will not, do.

I serve her course after course while the Master watches her intently. He is not, I know, staring at the way the gown clings to her young breasts, at the flushed wetness of her lips, the luminous gold of her skin. He is staring at the web of veins at her temples, the fear-strained eyes, the fluttering hands. He cannot eat at the table, but hunts his own meat. Although the sun has set, her presence still stops my tongue. I _could_ speak, but won't.

"How was your day, Princess?" he asks as she licks the last bit of custard from her spoon. She does it artistically, in the manner of the court. I don't think she realizes the effect. I won't cut her another piece unless she asks.

Vivian sits up straight and gives him a dazzling pout. "I hate it here, my lord," she says plaintively. "Those hands -- ." She shudders. "Make them stop."

"Have my servants been unkind?" He looks a little puzzled, though his voice shows no emotion. His speaking is part of the magic -- his mouth is no longer shaped like a man's -- and not given to subtle expression. We have learned to watch his ears, and eyes.

She opens her lips, and then shuts them as she realizes what she has to say. She knows perfectly well that her suppers with him are by _his_ orders, not ours. She doesn't realize the spell compels him, and wouldn't care if she did. "They won't leave me alone."

He sighs. "Supper is not negotiable, Princess."

The tears start again. Her face does not turn red and splotchy, and her bosom heaves becomingly. "I don't want to be here," she sobs, increasingly frantic. "I want to go home! I always get lost, and there's no one to talk to, and they won't leave me alone. And _you_ won't either, ugly stinking old monster! I wish someone would come and kill you!" It only a fair performance. After ninety-four years, I have seen many of them. She will be here for perhaps twelve months, if that -- he will eventually lose hope and let her go, and though they all promise none of them come back.

He gives that faint twisting movement that means a shrug. "It was your father's choice, my dear."

It wasn't much of a choice; but then, he wasn't much of a father. Nothing of the enchantment may leave the castle grounds without a price -- something any traveler might reasonably expect of a magical castle deep in a forbidden forest. Some honest men take nothing; some, seeing vast wealth unguarded, try to steal a king's ransom. Most, like Vivian's royal father, are somewhere in-between, possessing neither virtue nor the courage of their vice. These take only a little, but it is enough.

The thief must die, or provide an unmarried female relative between thirteen and thirty-three to stay -- at most -- two years. These are the terms of the spell; for some reason, women and men without family never find their way here, and no one comes when a Princess is already in residence. We have long since stopped wondering or wishing for anything else.

Vivian is still crying prettily. To get it over with, he asks, "Princess, will you marry me?" They do not always say no. Four have said yes; but they were saying yes to the castle, or the magic, not the Beast. The enchantment cannot be fooled.

Though after four days she should be expecting this, she shudders. " _Never!_ " she cries and flounces out, lovely even in disgust. He stares after her in lust and love and hate. It will one of the bad nights, I realize wearily.

The Master slumps in his chair. "Blanche?" he asks the air as the echo from the slammed door fades. He is outside the invisibility, and can neither see nor smell his servants. He can only touch us, or hear us speak, after sunset.

"Emma, my lord. Blanche is in the stillroom."

"Good evening, Emma. I have not seen much of you, since you left the stillroom yourself." Nearly sixty years ago; does he really remember?

I pour him a glass of wine. "No, my lord. You'd best hope that one never says yes."

He barks a little, and downs the glass. I pour another. He will talk longer if I keep his glass filled. "It doesn't matter anymore." In the past, he used to discourage the more horrid of the Princesses. It has been a long time since he has done that. "I don't remember being a man anymore. Do you remember?"

"Being a man?" I ask. "No, m'lord."

This laugh is better, and I relax. "Being visible."

"I'm not sure," I lie, and begin scraping the dishes out onto the largest of the platters. "I think I just remember remembering. I liked apples."

I remember. I was engaged to the miller's son, but he had not been caught by the Change. He had married the blacksmith's daughter less than a week after we disappeared. Watching their wedding was the only time I went among real people after the spell was cast.

I remember being kissed and touched; I remember waking in the late afternoon sunlight with his arm warm around me. I remember nausea, dizziness, terror that I would lose my job in the castle laundry, terror that my parents would disown me, terror that my lover wouldn't ask me to marry him. None of those things had happened, and I had thought myself lucky, and cried more for the miscarriage than the curse that brought it.

I have been twenty years old for nearly a century. The village is grown over now, gone to forest and superstition and wolves. My betrothed went with the blacksmith's family to the village down the river; my parents took my six brothers and sisters to the Capitol. I stopped praying for my dead baby, or anything at all, about a year after the change.

"I don't remember you, from before," he says.

I pull out the chair closest to him and sit down, looking wistfully at the wine. But even water causes nausea; anything more brings fever, coughing, catarrh. "You wouldn't, my lord. I worked in the laundry. Duke's sons don't go into laundries."

"No, I suppose not." He picks up a taper from the candelabra and begins worrying at it with a claw. "None of them is ever going to marry me, are they?"

After ninety-four years, we think a great deal of kindness, and little of honesty.

"As to that, my lord, I couldn't say. You'll find one."

"Not this one, though."

"I don't think so, my lord."

His claws pincer and work out bits of wax until he gets down to the wick. "Do you remember my name?" He is determined to work himself into a passion, and I sigh.

"No one does. It's part of the spell," I say. It's Richard, but if I told him, he would forget by tomorrow anyway, and be angrier for it. I remember his face, as well, too sharp to be handsome, and his red-blond hair. Marie says his eyes had been ice-grey, not lion-gold; I'd never been close enough to tell. He destroyed all the mirrors in the castle in the first week. I lean over and take the candle from him. "As is the supply of beeswax. This could have bought my family dinner for a week in the village."

His claws are black, shining. The fur on the backs of his paws is short and soft as a seal's pelt; the pads underneath are cool and dry. He grasps my wrist tightly, carelessly. I gasp, not with pain, as red spots bloom on the tablecloth and the mauled candle falls. He drops my hand and I wrap my apron around it.

"I'm sorry," we say at the same time. I stare into his eyes, but the feeling of contact is an illusion. He does not see me, though his eyes, spindled like a cat's, seem to see everything. Nor does he smell the lavender water I always wear, or hear how my heart is beating too fast.

"I overstepped myself, m'lord." And then, because he will feel guilty later, I add, "It does not hurt."

"I can't see your face to know if you're lying. Or your hand." His stillness has intensified to rage. He has surprised himself, and surprise makes him angry. "You had best go, Emma."

If I had any sense, I'd run. Instead I gather up the dishes and make a show of curtsying before I slip through the green baize door.

#

I try to sleep, for there is nothing I can do until the madness has run out of him. It doesn't work, because I am never able to sleep after my turn at supper, and because the suite I have taken -- once the housekeeper's and maids' quarters, close to both the library and the forest door -- are near enough the Princess' rooms that I can hear echoes of her tantrum.

Blanche goes to the Princess, because despite her black tempers she has a gentle touch with those who have pushed themselves too far. She and Marie will do whatever it is they do to soothe her. Davey, Leah, and Kathleen will clean the rooms. Vivian's -- I looked in -- has broken glass, spilled scent, rouge smeared over the walls and linens, dresses tumbled and torn. The Master's is worse, tapestries rent and furniture splintered and bloodstains everywhere. We find the scattered remnants of what had been a fawn, strewn throughout his suite.

The inner closet is untouched; we move him there. Jehan cuts away the tattered filthy velvet, and he and I set his broken arm while Pip fetches medicines from the stillroom. Jehan stands by, just in case, while I tend the Master's wounds, and I breathe in his sharp scent of sage and wintergreen to calm myself. Pip brings hot broth from the kitchen, and then goes to help Davey and Leah. The castle can provide new furniture and carpet, but it cannot remove the old, nor scrub the blood out of the wainscotting.

Mine is a dangerous task, but I have no talent with the Princesses, and I prefer his company maddened to well. My mother was the village midwife, and I am better than Marie at doctoring; she has stopped wondering why I left the stillroom when I loved it so. But she and Blanche can deal quite well enough with the injuries brought about by his ordinary carelessness.

I clean his wounds as gently as I can: the gash on his face, perilously close to his eye; the scratch across his belly; the ragged slice through his thigh, ground with dirt and leaf-mold; the bloody, blistered pads of his feet. I knot tiny stitches where needed -- far more carefully than I ever tack the Princesses' gowns -- bathe the tears with an infusion of garlic and pennyroyal, and dress them with Marie's mustard poultices. Then I take a brush and slowly pull out the mats and tangles and dirt from his coat; it will take hours. Jehan settles down to read.

Late in the afternoon, the Master stirs. Jehan watches anxiously as I dip a clean rag into the broth and press it to his mouth. This time, he does not lash out but suckles the cloth. He is not always so calm after waking; he clawed me, some forty years ago. There is still a faint ridge of scar along my neck. I don't suppose servants caught in the spell can die by injury, any more than he can. We only hurt.

"I am sorry," he whispers, his voice a weak rasp of pain.

I pet his cheek to let him know it is all right. "Who is it?" he asks.

 _Who it always is,_ I think. The sun spills like melted butter through the window, almost enough for me to see my own hands as I feed him. Suddenly he catches one in my mouth and I shut my eyes. "Emma?"

I pull my hand away and set the broth back on the hearth. "You do this most of the time, don't you?" he asks.

I take the pestle and wave it up and down. _Yes._

"How is she? Is she all right?"

There is only one _she_ in the castle. _Yes._

"I thought I killed -- ." He stops, as though I have not already seen the fawn's entrails fouling his drawing-room. Perhaps he does not remember the fawn. "Never mind. . . ." He drifts back to sleep as Jehan, reassured, stumbles to his bed in the Duchess' suite. I finish brushing out the shining fur, which smells of forests and cloves.

He wakes again past sundown, and I give him more broth. It is a tedious way to feed him, but spoons do not work well with his muzzle. "You're all right," I tell him. "No one was harmed. The Princess is well."

"She won't . . . like me." He tries to sit up.

His yellow eyes are febrile, unfocused. I push him back down -- it doesn't take much force -- and put the cloth back to his mouth. "It will be all right."

"Hurts." He is whimpering, a little, and he shuts his eyes. We learned, the hard way, that he cannot take pain's-ease or soporifics.

"Shh, I know," I soothe, stroking his forehead, where the fur is very short and stiff.

He tosses fretfully, and then wakes again. "Princess?" I am silent. "Will you marry me?"

I will remember this another ninety-four years, though he won't. It does not matter that he is delirious with fever, or that he thinks I am someone else. "Yes," I whisper. For once, he will have good dreams. _"Yes."_

He smiles a little, for the first time in a long time, and goes back to sleep. I take my window seat, close the sash against the night air, and cry, silently, until I can sleep too.

#

I wake in the morning when Jehan comes in. His face is white and strained in the bright dawn. "My lord?" he says. "My lord!"

 _He should put his clothes in the laundry more often, I think. And get a haircut._ Then I realize what I am seeing, what I am hearing, and I can't think at all.

Wonderingly, I lift the tiny stillroom mirror I use to check for breathing and as a palette for mixing herbs. I look twenty, still. My eyes are brown and ancient, not wrinkled but deep. My hair is not as bad as Jehan's, for I keep it in plaits, but my dress is mussed from being slept in. There is a livid bruise on my cheek from the Princess' flailings the day before yesterday, and in the harsh light I can see the pale line from my ear to my collarbone. "What has happened?" I ask; my voice sounds like my voice. I look at my hands: they are as white as a lady's, though not as smooth, with filed-down calluses -- so the silks will not catch -- and a half-moon of scabs on one wrist.

 _"C'est rompu,"_ Jehan breathes, jubilant. "Emma? My lord? The spell is broken!"

The Duke's son is sitting up in bed. His face is exactly as I remembered, except a neat line of stitches covers a newly-healed scar on one cheekbone, and there is another, older scar on his forehead. His chest bears more pale scars, almost silvery against skin as white as mushrooms. Tears are running down his face. "She said -- I remember asking her. She said yes." His voice sounds as it always has, except there is emotion in it now. What, I don't know.

Jehan freezes and swallows. "My lord, the Princess has never said yes. She has not seen you in two days," he says carefully.

"She said yes last night!" His hands shake and curl into claws and his teeth are bared in threat.

"My lord -- "

He stands up, throwing off the bedclothes, and turns to face Jehan so I can see his back and buttocks. "Then explain this!" Jehan trembles and presses back against the door.

Vivian will want him now that he is fair and rich and noble, but the thought of sewing her wedding gown makes me feel sick, even more than I am afraid.

I loved the Beast. It seems damnably unfair that he is now a man. "You asked me, my lord," I say from the window, and they both turn to stare at me. He drops back to the bed and yanks up the blankets, glaring; he hadn't realized a woman was in the room. "I didn't -- I just thought you should have good dreams." I feel helpless. "I'm sorry."

He looks at me, a slow long look that avoids my eyes. He sees the plain brown braids, the black woolen gown without lace or riband, the clotted blood on my wrist, the bruise on my cheek. The straight lean figure of a working woman. "Who are you?"

After a moment, I say, "Emma, my lord." Jehan looks as frightened as I feel.

"The laundry maid."

"Yes, my lord."

"Do you think a _laundry maid_ should marry a Duke's son?" he asks in a soft voice, more like a lion's purr than it had ever been when he was a beast.

"No, my lord." He stares at me with cold grey eyes, pinning me to the cold glass of the window. This is not a comfortable conversation to have with a man naked in his bed. "You asked, my lord. I thought you would sleep better. It was a bad night."

Someone knocks on the door; Jehan slips out to talk to whoever it is, escaping and preventing interruption. "A laundry maid," he says again.

"None of the Princesses ever agreed." At least not and meant it. "This one -- "

"I love her," he says.

Of course. "She refused you," I remind him. "She's not -- do you remember the fawn?"

He wilts and looks to the window and the wood beyond. "The fawn. Oh, _God_ . . . ."

I wait, and silently remind myself the recipes for teas. Blanche's St. John's Wort infusion, Marie's favorite chamomile, Jehan's special Peking blend, the jasmine-scented gunpowder Pip likes so. After a long time he looks up at me, not angry anymore. Some of the copper hair falls in his face. "Do you know who I am? I still don't remember."

"No," I lie. "I remember you were coming home early from the Capitol when your coachman ran down a magician's child, and the magician cursed us. Your family was still with the King, so they weren't caught in the spell. Only you and the servants."

"Why do you remember, and I don't?"

"I don't know, my lord."

He stares at me. There may be a choice, but I don't think he will risk the spell again. He will marry me. My hands start trembling. "God. I could have broken it ninety years ago," he laughs, bitterly.

"I don't know, my lord."

He snorts, which is so un-aristocratic that I can sit back down on the window seat. "Why did you say yes?"

"I thought you might sleep better."

"Huh. And what's-her-name, Anne, thought she'd get a castle. Lætitia wanted to go on fucking her invisi -- ." He breaks off, coloring. He never treated me as a lady before. Well, he never _saw_ me before.

"I hadn't thought you knew about Davey and her." And Blanche and Jehan, and possibly Kathleen too.

"Catalina liked the palace, and the wine cellar. Mathilde -- I don't know what Mathilde wanted. I don't think I want to know." He shudders a little. Mathilde had been quite, quite mad.

"Probably not," I agree.

"The terms of the spell were that she had to love the Beast."

"So we were told, my lord."

"You love me."

Even if I lie, Marie and Jehan know and likely the others. Some of the wistful things I'd said to Jehan, giving him his silk stockings and garters, or that horrible time I'd failed to seduce him; how I had given Marie the stillroom job, but still took care of him on the worst nights. How I would sit for hours, picking snarls from his coat so gently he never woke. I meet his eyes, but can't say anything. "For how long?"

 _If he laughs_ \-- I turn and stare blindly out the window. "I don't know. Fifty years? Sixty?"

"What, no childhood infatuation with the Duke's son?" he asks, mocking.

"No, my lord. I was going to be married. I never thought of you. I used to -- I was the stillroom maid for a while, after the Change. I saw a lot of you then." I peek around; his face is pale, but not amused or scornful.

"I remember." The man seems a little better-tempered, at least. He stares glumly at his hands, as if wondering where the claws went, and what to do with them now. "Why would you want a Beast?" he asks suddenly.

I open the window so the breeze can clear the room. Very slowly, as though he were still a wild thing, I walk over and sit on the edge of the bed. He watches me as if I were the predator; perhaps I am, now. "Or do you know -- ?"

"Hmph. Of course I know, I was betrothed. _Pip_ knows, though I'd hope -- well. Being trapped, for a hundred years, with very few people. . . ." I trail off. I never babble. Surely he realizes about his valet's collections, Davey's promiscuity, Marie and Blanche's almost-marriage? "I knew you were still a man," I say finally. "Did you really think differently?"

He shrugs. "Often enough." There is another uncomfortable silence. "Emma."

"Yes, my lord?" For the first time in ninety-four years, I hear the warbling of sparrows just outside the window.

"I'm sorry I'm such an ass." His mouth curves into a little smile, which I have never seen before; but I recognize the shrug. "I don't surprise well."

"No, my lord."

"Will you go let me get dressed? And put on something nice? And tell that Princess to go home."

"Yes, my lord. I will fetch Jehan." Something nice, indeed. But before I can get up he reaches out and catches my shoulder.

"Emma, will you marry me?" he asks. He looks resigned, but not entirely unhappy. It might be all right.

It might not. "Of course." I curtsy and go to the Great Hall, where everyone will be waiting for an explanation.


End file.
